Threats to networked computers from hostile network traffic are becoming more and more serious. Compounding the problem is the increase in known vulnerabilities to widely used network applications. Particular attacks, such as Code Red and Nimda, exploit application vulnerabilities and hostile network traffic to compromise and damage systems. Existing technologies that perform both network-based and host-based intrusion detection or intrusion prevention on a computer or workstation examine all network traffic for all known attacks they have been configured to detect. However, because networks are getting faster, and the number of attacks to detect is constantly growing, the processing required by current intrusion detectors is increasing in two dimensions. Eventually, all other processes may be denied the use of the computer since all the processing resources will be consumed by the intrusion detection or intrusion prevention system.